


Raise It Up

by VolxdoSioda



Series: Tea Time [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fix-It, time traveling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 10:32:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/pseuds/VolxdoSioda
Summary: Noctis leaps through time from the candle on his window, and leaves Somnus and Ardyn breathless behind him, wondering who, and what.Eventually, they will discover him again.





	Raise It Up

The candle in the window is the shared point between the two worlds. Half-melted in Noctis' world, almost entirely untouched in Somus and Ardyn's, whatever magics were imbued in its making strong enough to act as the proverbial gate between times. A gate Phoenix has been remarking that he should exploit, and use to perhaps  _fix_ a few things. 

No matter what he does though, he stands out. Somnus knows him by sight now, as does Ardyn, and most of their close guard. And every time he's spotted, it becomes a little harder to get away, to lose his tail long enough to slip back into the brothers' private room and relight the candle. The last time, the door had slammed open just as the flame lit, and he'd heard Somnus yell something, and felt the tingle of a spell brush his spine seconds before the spell in the candle had snapped him up again and tossed him back in time.

He keeps expecting the candle to light itself one day, for Somnus and Ardyn to come tumbling through his time, the brothers' fixation on him enough to drive them mad enough to follow him home and drag him back to their sides. He knows now where the Lucis Caelum passion and fixation for certain people comes from, why they remain so loyal to one person - it comes from the blood of Somnus, who took one look at Noctis and has been trying to wrap hands around him since.

His actions  _are_ changing things, however. History is changing with every move Noctis makes, every escape he lands. The Infernian has gone from the death of Solheim to remaining it's patron, for all that Solheim itself continued to exist until Lucis snuffed it out, and its people integrated into Lucian culture instead. With the Infernian's temper remaining unlit, the Meteor that bore the Starscourge was not called down, and so Ardyn did not go to use his healing powers to send the Thing in the Meteor back. He did not spend two thousand years struggling against insurmountable odds against an abomination that would wear him down, but not break him. 

Ardyn Lucis Caelum meets Izunia Pitioss - and now Noctis knows the face behind the mind of Pitioss Dungeon - and marries. They never have children, but they never truly need to. Not when Somnus goes and adopts seven boys out of the gate, and when he eventually marries the Oracle, he has four girls before finally calling it quits. Those seven boys and four girls go on to have children of their own, and the line spreads and spreads, and now Noctis has cousins and aunts and uncles he never had otherwise. Regis is an only child, but Mors wasn't, and it seems at some point the Amicitia lines crossed over into the Lucis Caelum ones - not counting Regis' second marriage to Clarus, of course - because children on both sides know Noctis.

Know him a little  _too_ well, in fact. Things he's never told anyone. Like his affinity for cats, his ability to understand them and speak back, the fact that his magics are as strong as they are. His power and speed, his conquests from his time in Solheim's glory days.

In the end, he finds out about himself the same way all of his extensive family do - through Somnus' and Ardyn's journal. It's quite the sobering experience.

Somnus' journal is full of passion and want and Noctis can practically see the man pacing holes in his floor as he writes, hands coming up to run through his hair in that Lucis Caelum way that only makes them look that much more attractive. Ardyn's is full of quieter longing, but no less the passion. They both admire and desire Noctis, want to know who he is and why he keeps appearing and disappearing like a phantom. Want to know if he's a God in disguise (Noctis chokes on his spit) or if he's some wilder fey creature that is trying to tempt them away from ruling Solheim. Where he keeps disappearing to.

A question that, as best Noctis can tell, never gets answered.

But his family  _knows_ Noctis is messing about with the time stream, slipping in and out like a fish up a waterfall, dashing back and forth and trying to do as Phoenix asked him, all those days ago. To fix things. To make them better. To prevent the Gods' interference, for although they are Gods, their time is locked - they can't move freely as he can now. Only Phoenix can, and Phoenix hasn't been seen since the birth of the Six. Much like Noctis, the elder fire God has proven elusive, evasive, impossible to pin down and conquer. 

And now Noctis follows his steps, bringing bright flashes of life to Somnus and Ardyn's days, and longer periods of rest in his own home, ignoring the grins he gets from cousins and aunts and uncles, and the slightly exasperated looks he gets from Regis, when he's late for dinner and still dressed like he's been tromping through the countryside.

At some point, he expects a confrontation. Either from Regis, a demand for him to stop meddling in the lives of their ancestors, their Mystic and their Healer, and marry someone and settle down, for a confrontation from the Gods to stop breaking their plans. After all, with all this movement, there's no Starscourge, no need to worry about a Chosen King, no sacrifices for the Crystal.

 _The Crystal is a hungry beast above all else,_  he recalls Phoenix telling him.  _It will never be sated, no matter what it promises._

He expects something, and at times it feels like there are eyes on his back, tracing him, watching him in ways that have him watching over his shoulder all the time even when logic tells him nobody is there. The worst of the feeling happens in the throne room, sitting besides his father during Council sessions; he swears there are hands on his shoulders, hands on his arms, and he sits silent and still with the expression of a man refusing to answer questions by an enemy kingdom. 

It's only later he laughs at himself, for ever thinking Somnus and Ardyn would not eventually discover him - the who and the what, for the only thing greater than the Phoenix is Etro herself, and Etro holds death. The souls of the Lucis Kings and Queens come and go as they please, and Somnus is the first in that long line. Ardyn would not leave Somnus behind. So of course they would come to know the 'fey creature' that has been flitting about their halls and leaving them dazed and breathless would be one of their own line.

Of course they would seek to get him back for all those times he left them feeling uncontrolled, in loss of their own faculties.  And what greater punishment to hand down to the one holding their attentions than to leave him feeling on edge, like he's being hunted, without seeing sign of the hunter? It's enough to make a man go mad. And it isn't as if Noctis can avoid the throne room - eventually he must return, and the feelings of hands and eyes with it, and occasional breath on the back of his neck, warm enough to make him want to seize up. 

He doesn't, because Phoenix told him  _"Don't flinch,"_ but that's the only reason why.

**Author's Note:**

> I ran out of time for the round, owing to my brain not wanting to write much lately. Nothing big, anyhow. So nothing really got explained or delved into, but I still had fun. 
> 
> No I'm not going to continue it, no I will not expand on it, no don't bother asking.


End file.
